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Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg, nicknamed the "grandmother of German Socialism", is an exiled member of the German Organisation of the Internationale (DOI) and popular advocate of Women's suffrage. History Early life Luxemburg and her family were Polish Jews living in Russian-controlled Poland. She was the fifth and youngest child of timber trader Eliasz Luxemburg and Line Löwenstein. The family spoke German and Polish, and Luxemburg also learned Russian. The family moved to Warsaw in 1873. After being bedridden with a hip ailment at the age of five, she was left with a permanent limp. When Luxemburg moved to Germany in May 1898, she settled in Berlin. She was active there in the left wing of the SPD, harshly criticising the revisionist factions. She argued that the critical difference between capital and labour could only be countered if the proletariat assumed power and effected revolutionary changes in methods of production. She wanted the revisionists ousted from the SPD. Between 1904 and 1906, she was imprisoned for her political activities on three occasions. In 1907, she went to the Russian Social Democrats' Fifth Party Day in London, where she met Vladimir Lenin. At the socialist Second International Congress in Stuttgart, her resolution, demanding that all European workers' parties should unite in attempting to stop the war, was accepted. In 1912 Luxemburg was the SPD representative at the European Socialists congresses. She argued that European workers' parties should organize a general strike when war broke out. In 1913, she told a large meeting: "If they think we are going to lift the weapons of murder against our French and other brethren, then we shall shout: 'We will not do it!'". The Weltkrieg In 1914, when the crises in the Balkans erupted to violence and then war, there was no general strike and the SPD majority supported the Weltkrieg, as did the French Socialists. The Reichstag unanimously agreed to financing the war. The SPD voted in favour of that and agreed to a truce with the Imperial government, promising to refrain from any strikes during the war. So in August, Luxemburg, along with Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, founded the "Die Internationale" group; becoming the Spartacus League in January 1916. The Spartacus League vehemently rejected the SPD's support for the Weltkrieg, trying to lead Germany's proletariat to an anti-war general strike. As a result, in June 1916 Luxemburg was imprisoned for two and a half years. Friends smuggled her writings out of the prison and illegally published her articles. Among them was the Russian Revolution, criticising the Bolsheviks of their dictatorship. Nonetheless, she continued to call for a "dictatorship of the proletariat", albeit not of the one party Bolshevik model. In 1917, the Spartacus League began affiliating with the USPD. She was once of the most prominent socialist leaders during the September Insurrections. With the revolution grinding to a halt and the SPD deputies leaving the councils, Luxemburg urged for an immediate attempt at realising the Socialist revolution, but it was too late. Exile Following the failure of the September Insurrections and the signing of the Enabling Act, Luxemburg fled Germany becoming an exilee. She is believed to now reside in France, but still works closely with the DOI. See also *Commune of France *Union of Britain Category:People Category:Europeans Category:German-related topics